


Dyno

by anthean



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: Disaster Lesbians, F/F, Height Differences, M/M, POV Outsider, Rated T for one f-bomb, Standard-Issue Thrawn Bullshit, Teamwork makes the dream work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:21:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29159574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthean/pseuds/anthean
Summary: Engineering Technician Teebran Selkirk, recently transferred to theISD Chimaera, is really glad to learn that Admiral Thrawn and his aide are such good friends. Just like her friend Maks, who spots her at the gym and gives her protein bars and sometimes holds her hand.(plot twist:they gay)
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character, Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo/Eli Vanto
Comments: 6
Kudos: 49





	Dyno

**Author's Note:**

> What's up thranto fandom, did you miss me? I started this back in September but unfortunately, as you probably already know, *the entirety of 2020*
> 
> Deep thanks to 13th_blackbird for the beta!

Teebran murmured directions to herself as she headed down the _Chimaera’_ s shining, identical, corridors. “Left, straight ahead, left, right-” and there was the aft gymnasium.

She gave her ID number to the man behind the desk. “Teebran Selkirk, Engineering Technician. I was just transferred here,” she said. “I have-”

“A fitness eval, yeah,” he said, sounding bored. He punched a few keys on his datapad. “Looks like Makka’s free. _Hey, Maks!”_ he yelled.

 _“Kriff off!”_ came a voice from across the gymnasium, followed by a small figure dropping from the climbing wall and bounding across the mats.

Makka--Maks?--skidded to a halt beside the desk. “What’s up,” she said, seeming to address both her colleague and Teebran indiscriminately.

“Eval,” the man said, gesturing at Teebran.

Maks looked up at Teebran--way up; Teebran had to be over a foot taller than she was--and smiled. It was a mischievous smile, one of her canine teeth poking over her bottom lip, her eyes sparkling.

Teebran’s heart flipped over in her chest.

“Eval complete,” Maks said. “I evaluate you fit as hell.”

“I, uh,” Teebran began, shifting her gym bag to her other shoulder. She _had_ spent a lot of time in the gym at her last posting; it was probably obvious from the way her uniform fit her. “I think we really do need to do the evaluation.”

“Yeah, of course,” Maks said easily. She turned and began leading the way to an empty corner of the gym. “I’m Maks, I think you heard. I’m one of the trainers here. I have a rank but no one ever uses it.”

“Teebran. I’m in Engineering.”

“Okay, Teebran from Engineering.” She gave Teebran _the smile_ again, with exactly the same results. “Today I’m just going to put you through a basic workout, see where you are, physically, and then we’ll put together a fitness plan to keep you at a good level and work on whatever areas need improvement. Do you have any injuries I should know about?”

“No, fortunately,” Teebran said. She realized she was still clutching her gym bag and dropped it to the mat.

“Great!” Maks chirped.

And proceeded to beat Teebran into the _floor._

Basic workout _my ass,_ Teebran thought sourly an hour later. Only about two percent of her brain was able to form the thought; the rest was just yelling _OWFUCK_ as loud as it could.

“You did great,” Maks reassured her. She poked a few buttons on her datapad.

“Augh,” Teebran said. She desperately wanted to sit down, maybe lie face-down on the floor and try to forget she had muscles for a while, but Maks was still standing and Teebran had her pride.

Maks laughed. “Okay, I’ve sent your training plan to your datapad and assigned you to this gym. I’m always here, so if you need to make it harder--”

 _“Why would I need to make it harder,”_ Teebran muttered.

“--just check in with me.” She smiled and passed Teebran a protein bar. “Or, you know, if you need a workout buddy. Someone to spot you. Let me know, I’m happy to help.”’

“I will,” Teebran said, smiling back helplessly.

And she did. She headed to the aft gymnasium after most of her shifts, getting to know the equipment and working through the regimen Maks had made for her. It wasn’t as bad as that first day, Teebran was relieved to find: Maks had expertly identified the areas where Teebran needed improvement and had developed a plan that pushed her without breaking her.

And of course, Maks was always there. Sometimes Teebran sought her out with questions, but more often Maks just bounced over to check on her unprompted, correcting her technique with the weights, pushing her to go just a touch faster on the treadmill, or dragging her into a friendly sparring match.

They had just finished such a match, one day about a month after Teebran’s transfer to the _Chimaera,_ when she looked up and realized that Admiral Thrawn had taken over the mat next to hers. She had never seen him in person, but it couldn’t be anyone else: there weren’t exactly a lot of aliens in the Navy. Both he and his sparring partner--a short human man--were totally focused on their bout, ignoring the surreptitious glances being shot their way.

“That’s his aide, Commander Vanto,” Maks whispered, coming up beside Teebran and linking their arms together. “They rotate through all the gyms. It’s a good way for people like us, who wouldn’t ordinarily work with them, to see the Admiral.”

On the mat, Thrawn snaked away from Vanto’s hold, then got in under his guard and drove Vanto to the floor. Vanto struggled for a moment, but Thrawn’s weight and height had him thoroughly pinned, and he tapped the mat to signal defeat a moment later. Thrawn helped him to his feet and Vanto feinted a punch at Thrawn’s gut, dodging away and laughing at Thrawn’s retaliatory swipe. They faced each other and began again.

“They must be friends,” Teebran said. It was nice to see people working together who clearly liked each other, nice that Vanto didn’t seem intimidated by the imposing admiral.

Maks studied the pair for a moment before turning her eyes back to Teebran. “No kidding,” she said, and punched Teebran’s shoulder gently.

Teebran felt a smile steal over her face. She reached out and shoved Maks back, and a warm glow suffused her chest when Maks staggered backwards dramatically, clutching her heart.

“Another round?” Teebran suggested. “I’ll beat you again.”

“You’re _so tall_ ,” Maks whined. She looked up at the chrono on the wall. “Actually, my shift is over in five. Want to grab dinner?”

She looked a little nervous, which was silly. But then, Teebran reflected, they hadn’t hung out outside of the gym before. Maks was probably worried that Teebran wasn’t interested in becoming real friends instead of just gym friends.

Well, that was easy to fix. “Yeah, definitely,” she said. “Just let me get changed.”

Half an hour later found them sharing a table in the nearest dining hall, staring suspiciously at bowls of moulded protein blocks.

“It’s supposed to be Alderaanian stew,” Teebran said, poking at one of her protein blobs. It was shaped like something that might have been a fish, but not any fish native to Alderaan. Or possibly anywhere.

“At least it’s supposed to be something,” Maks said between bites. “When I was in the Stormtrooper Corps, we got protein cubes with protein paste on top. Not inspiring.”

Teebran stared. “You were a Stormtrooper?”

Maks’ mouth was full; she nodded.

“Aren’t you a little-”

Maks gulped down her food. “Short, yeah.” She waved her fork. “About six months ago my unit was being broken up, all of us sent to different postings. I wanted to stay here, and I was already doing a lot of personal training work unofficially for my unit. Admiral Thrawn got me transferred to Health & Fitness and let me stay on the _Chimaera_ while I got certified with holonet classes.”

“That’s…” That level of investment in personnel was _astonishing._ “Unexpected.”

“Well, it probably wasn’t actually him who orchestrated the whole thing. But he’s…” Maks thought for a moment, choosing her words carefully. “He’s made an environment where I could ask, you know? Even though I was just a trooper.”

“I get it,” Teebran said. She stirred her lumpy stew, finally taking a bite of one of the maybe-fish. It was surprisingly edible, if worryingly chewy. “I’m glad,” she continued once she’d finally managed to swallow.

“What about you?” Maks asked. She’d somehow managed to talk and inhale her stew at the same time, and now sat back contentedly. “Where were you before this?”

Teebran glanced around; no one was close enough to hear. “The _Twisted Claw_ ,” she said, voice low.

“Oh,” Maks said, looking faintly puzzled, then “ _oh_ ,” as she realized where she’d heard the name before. She looked around, performing the same check that Teebran had moments before. “That’s...not a good ship, I’ve heard.”

 _Not a good ship_ was putting it mildly, but it was about as overt as either of them were willing to get in a public dining hall. No matter if a captain had a little problem with Correlian whisky and spent most of his time either insensible in his cabin or wandering the corridors raving; no matter if the First Officer, overcompensating under the strain of covering for the captain, went a little overboard when assigning punishments for real and imagined lapses. Engineering technicians and Stormtroopers-turned-trainers didn’t get to criticize.

It had taken Teebran eight months and every string she could possibly pull to get transferred. She wasn’t going to jeopardize her new position by bad-mouthing her old ship where someone might overhear.

“It wasn’t great,” she said. Maks nodded minutely, and Teebran knew she’d been understood. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“Agreed,” Maks said, and launched into a story about trying to redo the climbing routes on the gym’s rock wall and getting stuck four meters above the floor that had Teebran in stitches. She offered a story about the first time she’d tried to clear a ventilation duct by herself, and they sat there trading stories until exhaustion and the knowledge that she had an early shift the next day drove Teebran back to her quarters.

But it was nice to have made a real friend, she reflected as she got ready for bed. And nice that that friend was Maks, who was smart and funny and helpful, and whose smile made Teebran feel like a new person every day.

Thinking of Maks’ smile, she fell asleep.

Teebran didn’t expect to see Admiral Thrawn again until the next time he decided to visit the aft gymnasium, so she was surprised when a summons to his briefing room appeared on her datapad a few weeks later. She pushed down the reflexive wave of nausea--she wasn’t in trouble, she’d done nothing wrong. He probably just needed an engineer, just wanted her to do the job she was paid to do.

She held that thought close as she pressed her palm on the panel outside Admiral Thrawn’s office and the door cycled to let her in.

The room was dim, lit only by dozens of holoimages that hung in the air, some gently rotating. They appeared to be...artwork? She stopped, trying to orient herself among the holograms.

“Sorry about that,” a voice came from the direction of the desk. The holoimages disappeared and the lights came on.

Commander Vanto stood by the desk, clearly having just switched off the holos. The admiral was nowhere in sight.

“Technician Selkirk, thanks for coming,” Vanto said. “I’m Commander Vanto, the Admiral’s aide. He’ll be here in a minute.”

“Yes, sir,” Teebran said, since some answer seemed to be required and she still had no idea what she was doing here. Still-holos of artwork? Commander Vanto seeming perfectly comfortable taking over the Admiral’s briefing room? No obvious engineering problem for her to solve? It was bizarre.

Vanto sighed, seeming to read some of her bafflement on her face. “I told him you’d be confused,” he said, shaking his head. “Look, Admiral Thrawn will explain it in more detail, but basically, we have to go down to a planet tomorrow for some negotiations and the Admiral wants you to join the landing party. You won’t have to do anything, just stand there and look official.”

This clarified nothing. “Sir,” Teebran said, “I’m an engineer. Surely one of the command crew would be a better choice.” Her heart pounded at even implying a contradiction, and her palms began to sweat. She hid them behind her back.

“According to the Admiral, none of them are tall enough,” Vanto said. He shrugged. “I’m not sure I understand it either. Listen, just let him explain when he gets here, and then you can decide what you want to do. I know it’s a strange request. I can only say that...you get used to strange requests when you work for Admiral Thrawn.”

Admiral Thrawn explained. It clarified nothing. Teebran was confused as she messaged Maks that she wouldn’t be at the gym tomorrow; she was confused as she sat in a shuttle, Admiral Thrawn and Vanto sitting across from her and looking totally unconcerned; she was confused as she stood in front of the alien delegation and tried to school her features into something formal and imposing.

And she was confused when something went wrong, the aliens attacked, and they were thrown into a dungeon.

Vanto had been hit by a stun bolt during the fight; he lay unconscious, his head on Admiral Thrawn’s knee and his body curled up to fit in the cramped space. Teebran and Admiral Thrawn had escaped with only bruises, although Teebran could feel an ache building in her shoulder that Maks was going to frown over when they got back to the _Chimaera_.

If they got back to the _Chimaera_ , Teebran thought gloomily. At least they weren’t tied up. They sat at the bottom of a circular pit, almost like a well, with a grate covering the entrance three meters above them. It was oddly low-tech, just heavy stone and thick metal, nothing that could be sliced or overridden. She had looked for loose stones or hidden exits, but without any luck.

She leaned back against the wall and signed, folding her arms across her chest for a little added warmth and trying to prepare herself for what she expected would be a long, uncomfortable, wait. It was going to get cold down here at night, and there wasn’t enough room to lie down.

Not that she expected to sleep.

Vanto stirred. His eyes opened and his gaze travelled blearily around the room before falling on Admiral Thrawn’s face.

“Thrawn,” he said, and winced. “Admiral. So you were right.”

“Yes,” Admiral Thrawn said. “How do you feel?” He passed his hand gently over Vanto’s head, as though checking for injuries. His other hand, Teebran noticed, rested casually on Vanto’s shoulder.

Vanto made a face and said something in a language Teebran didn’t recognize. It seemed to make sense to Admiral Thrawn, though; he responded in the same language, and they began a quiet conversation.

It felt weird to be listening. Teebran looked away, but there were only so many places she could look in such a small cell; she eventually ended up staring up at the grate, studying the hinges that allowed it to lift up.

Wait.

Was that…

She stood up, squinting to get a better view of the grate. The conversation below her died away as Vanto and Admiral Thrawn looked up at her.

“Technician Selkirk?” Admiral Thrawn prompted.

“Sir,” she said. “I can’t be sure from down here, but I think those are Mylan hinges, and they look like they haven’t been correctly installed. If I can get up there, and if we can find something to use as a shim, I’m pretty sure I can get the grate open.”

“How big a shim?” Vanto asked. He was sitting up now, although he still looked wobbly and was leaning half against the wall and half on Admiral Thrawn’s shoulder.

Teebran gestured with her hand. “Not too big.”

Vanto unclipped his rank plaque, and in a few minutes had disassembled it and bent the casing into a shim of the right dimensions. He handed it to Teebran and she nodded thanks.

Then she looked up at the grate and her heart fell again. How the kriff was she going to get up there? The walls were smooth well-laid stone, with no convenient toe- or finger-holds for her to climb. Maks would probably have already swarmed up the walls, but Teebran...

“If I may present a solution,” Admiral Thrawn said, rising gracefully to his feet. “I believe the two of us together will reach the appropriate height.”

On the floor, his head tipped back to rest on the wall, Vanto laughed.

Later, Teebran would try unsuccessfully to forget the _utter mortifying embarrassment_ of climbing an Admiral like a jungle gym and sitting on his shoulders the way she’d played with her older brother as a child. To Admiral Thrawn’s credit, he remained perfectly stoic during the whole horrifying procedure, only asking with quiet professionalism if she minded him touching her before steadying her with hands on her shins. Teebran wasn’t much shorter than Admiral Thrawn, and holding her up during the fifteen minutes it took to jimmy the hinges loose couldn’t have been comfortable, but he never hurried her or suggested that Teebran hold up Vanto instead.

Finally the hinges came loose, and Teebran knocked the grate aside with a sharp blow from the heel of her hand.

“Okay, it’s open,” Teebran called down softly. “You can let me down.”

“Hm,” said Admiral Thrawn. “I think it would be wiser if you were to pull yourself up now.”

“Yes, sir,” Teebran said. A short period of scrambling and fumbling later--thank the gods for Maks’ insistence that she put in time on the rock wall--she was out, her hands only a little scraped up.

“I’m passing Commander Vanto up to you, Technician,” came Admiral Thrawn’s voice from the hole, and a moment later Vanto’s head and shoulders appeared. Teebran grabbed his arms and pulled, and together they managed to bundle him out of the hole and onto the floor, where he sat dazed for a moment, his hand pressed to his forehead.

“Are you all right, sir?” Teebran whispered.

“I’m fine, just a little dizzy,” he said. “Sorry, I haven’t been much help.”

Senior officers apologizing to her was so weird that Teebran decided immediately to ignore it. She was just beginning to wonder how they were going to get the Admiral out when his entire upper body shot out of the hole, the vertex of some incredible vertical leap. He grabbed the edge and twisted himself free of the hole in one smooth motion, landing gracefully on his feet, not even winded.

“Show-off,” Vanto said.

“Indeed,” Admiral Thrawn replied. He pulled Vanto to his feet and they looked at each other for a long moment.

Teebran was aware that some lightning-fast, utterly silent, conversation was taking place, but what it could be about, she had no idea.

“Let us go,” Admiral Thrawn finally said. “We are finished here.”

Finished with what? What had they accomplished? Teebran didn’t know, and didn’t care. All she wanted was to get back to the _Chimaera_ as soon as possible, and never get involved in one of Admiral Thrawn’s schemes again.

Back in the medical bay, the three of them were minutely examined by an overenthusiastic medical droid, which kept beeping in distress and attempting to herd them into bacta tanks until Admiral Thrawn gave it a _look_. Teebran escaped with bacta-infused bandages for her hands and an order for a day of medical leave, and was heading down the corridor back to her quarters when Admiral Thrawn’s voice stopped her.

“Technician Selkirk,” he said behind her.

She turned. “Sir,” she said. The wave of nausea was rising again. Was the Admiral angry that she’d taken charge in the dungeon? He hadn’t acted like it in the moment, but maybe now that they were back on the ship--

“Well done,” Admiral Thrawn said.

What?

“I-” she began.

“Teebran!” a voice called from down the corridor

She turned, and Maks was running towards her.

Teebran looked back over her shoulder, but Admiral Thrawn was already walking away, Vanto at his side. She turned back to Maks.

“Teebran! What happened? Are you okay?” Maks skidded to a stop in front of her. “Your message said you were going down to the planet, but then you didn’t come back, and someone said that there was an attack but no one seemed to know if that was true or not, and-”

“Maks, it’s okay,” Teebran interrupted. It was hard to get the words out, she was smiling so big. “I’m okay. I can tell you what happened.”

“Caf,” Maks said firmly. She grabbed Teebran’s hand and began propelling her back down the corridor, the way Admiral Thrawn and Vanto had gone. “You need something warm, it’s good for shock.”

“I’m not in shock,” Teebran protested. Her brain was stuck on Maks’ hand, warm in her own. “Besides, I don’t think caffeine would help if I were.”

“Tea, then,” Maks said. “The tapcafe three levels down serves cassius floret tea, which I am reliably informed is healthy. I’m buying. You can tell me what happened on the way.”

“Okay, okay,” Teebran said. She held Maks' hand a little tighter and began telling the story. It wasn’t very exciting, really, since she mostly had no idea what had been going on, but Maks seemed interested anyway. She kept hold of Teebran’s hand, and they walked in step.

“--so then he lifted Vanto up and passed him to me, and--” Teebran stopped. One of the light panels on the grid they were passing was flickering, probably a bulb that was burning out. “Hang on, I want to fix this really quick.”

“Teebran,” Maks protested. “Aren’t you on medical rest? Tell a mouse droid, someone else can fix it.”

“No, it’s okay,” Teebran said. “There’s a storage closet for fixtures literally right here, it’ll take two minutes and it’ll bother me otherwise.”

She stopped in front of the fixtures closet and palmed it open--

\--and then slammed her palm back down to close the door and took off at a run, her breath coming fast and her heart jackhammering in her chest. She skidded down the hallway and around a corner, ducking behind a support pillar and listening for pursuit.

Quick footsteps followed her down the corridor and she felt her heart speed up, but then she realized they were familiar.

It was just Maks.

“Teebran?” Maks called.

Teebran swallowed a few times; her mouth had gone dry. “I’m here,” she finally managed. “Uh, behind the pillar.” She didn’t feel like coming out yet.

Maks appeared in the corridor and tucked herself behind the pillar with Teebran. Her brow was wrinkled with mild concern, but she didn’t appear especially distressed.

“So, that was awkward,” she said, pulling an exaggerated embarrassed face.

“They were--” Teebran started, then couldn’t go on.

Admiral Thrawn and Commander Vanto, wrapped around each other in the fixtures closet, Thrawn bent over and Vanto’s face lifted as they kissed. Admiral Thrawn’s hands cradling Vanto’s head, Vanto’s hands somewhere Teebran _really did not want to think about_.

“Teebran, it’s okay, it’s not a big deal,” Maks began, her eyes beginning to widen in alarm.

Teebran interrupted her. “He’s a _subordinate_ ,” she hissed. “It’s so unethical, what if he’s being coerced?”

Maks put her hands on Teebran’s arms, which she’d folded defensively across her chest without realizing she’d done so. “Listen. He is not being coerced. No, listen,” she said, raising her voice a little when Teebran tried to interject. “Everyone on this ship knows about those two. Frankly, I thought you’d picked up on it weeks ago. No one cares.”

“No one _cares?_ Maks, that’s not actually a good thing!” Teebran protested.

“On your old ship, it wouldn’t have been,” Maks continued. “But it’s different here. Trust me, we’ve all seen how moof-eyed Admiral Thrawn and Vanto are over each other. Vanto is not being coerced.”

“Maks…” Teebran felt her shoulders hunch down further. “I want to believe you, okay? But I’ve been on bad ships, and this kind of thing, it’s…”

“Does this feel like a bad ship to you?” Maks asked. “Before my unit was transferred to the _Chimaera_ , I served on the _Steel Spider_. One third of my unit died in the first month. But the _Chimaera_ loses sixty percent fewer troopers than other Star Destroyers, and wins more engagements. I don’t know what our TIE stats are, but from the way the vac-heads never shut up I suspect they’re pretty good.”

Teebran laughed a little: the _Chimaera’s_ dining halls and tapcafes did seem to always be full of TIE pilots wanting to brag about their latest dogfight. And it was true that the atmosphere of the _Chimaera_ was lighter than that of the _Twisted Claw_. People didn’t look over their shoulders here.

Maks squeezed her arms reassuringly. “This is a good ship, okay? What the Admiral and Vanto are doing works. They could fuck in the middle of the docking bay-”

“ _Please don’t say things like that,_ ” Teebran said desperately.

“-and none of us would say anything. It’s their business.”

Teebran took a deep breath. “Are you sure?” she finally asked.

“I’m sure,” Maks said.

And she trusted Maks.

Maks, who was her best friend, who was thoughtful and kind and funny, who had weird opinions about how sparring mats should be folded for storage and an eternal war with whoever kept rearranging her free weights, who was always excited to see Teebran no matter what else was going on.

Who, she realized, had been waiting for Teebran to figure herself out for a while now.

Teebran unfolded her arms, caught Maks around the waist, and tugged her close.

“Do you maybe want to find our own fixtures closet?” she asked.

A blinding smile flashed across Maks’ face. “About time you asked,” she said, and pulled Teebran down.

**Author's Note:**

> "maks is a dream girl" --my beta reader


End file.
